Sqwink Album Art Blog

As a graphic designer for CD Sleeves, I’m very interested in the latest development in this apparently new ‘iTunes naming convention’ - Album Artwork. Obviously, as time progresses, and now in 2008, 80% of all albums are downloaded through online retailers, so are no longer physical ‘CDs’.

Back in the day, a collection of music was aptly named an LP - a Long Playing Album [enclosed in an album sleeve]…and as this format started to fade away for the most part, CDs became prevalent - and I assume, the phase ‘CD Sleeve’ was born.

Now, bare with me, I’m getting to the crux this whole blog post. When you import an album into iTunes, you can scroll down a menu and Get Album Artwork (see image below). Note that it is no longer referred to as a CD sleeve and other such derivatives.

So, the question I’m asking is this: is Apple iTune’s taking it upon themselves to call sleeve’s ‘Album Artwork’ in this mp3-toting day of age? I know that this phase has been used for decades too, but not the prevailing choice for describing LP/CD covers. If you have any genuine thoughts on this issue, feel free to leave a comment.

As a graphic designer for CD Sleeves, I’m very interested in the latest development in this apparently new ‘iTunes naming convention’ - Album Artwork. Obviously, as time progresses, and now in 2008, 80% of all albums are downloaded through online retailers, so are no longer physical ‘CDs’.

Back in the day, a collection of music was aptly named an LP - a Long Playing Album [enclosed in an album sleeve]…and as this format started to fade away for the most part, CDs became prevalent - and I assume, the phase ‘CD Sleeve’ was born.

Now, bare with me, I’m getting to the crux this whole blog post. When you import an album into iTunes, you can scroll down a menu and Get Album Artwork (see image below). Note that it is no longer referred to as a CD sleeve and other such derivatives.

So, the question I’m asking is this: is Apple iTune’s taking it upon themselves to call sleeve’s ‘Album Artwork’ in this mp3-toting day of age? I know that this phase has been used for decades too, but not the prevailing choice for describing LP/CD covers. If you have any genuine thoughts on this issue, feel free to leave a comment.